Friday, July 14, 2006
Some Thoughts and World Cup Wrap-Up
The MLB All-Star Game was played on Tuesday. Nobody cares about all-star games in any league anymore. Yet this decides home field advantage for the World Series. The NL side that makes it there needs all the help they can get, but due to the superiority of the AL they always win the all-star giving them even more of an advantage in the fall. It's high time to do away with all these mid-season breaks that do little more than waste time.
The Oilers trade of Chris Pronger for Joffrey Lupul, a good prospect Ladislav Smid, and high draft picks is disappointing in the sense that Edmonton lost on of the games biggest stars. But looking back, Eric Brewer was what Kevin Lowe gave up for Pronger, so Brewer for the afforementioned players and a trip to the Stanley Cup final doesn't look too shabby.
Eskimos coach Dany Maciocia made a couple of surprising cuts in training camp and early in the season in Joe Montford and Donny Brady. Montford is now back and after witnessing the struggles of the secondary Brady's return shouldn't be ruled out of the question. Not exactly looking like a genius, eh Maciocia?
Speaking of the all-star break, it was held in Pittsburgh. Steeltown was a great baseball city for over a century, but after 15 years of losing even the most loyal fans have their patience tested. Of course their struggles are due mainly to the fact that they are a farm team for the likes of New York and Boston. With much of the talk focusing on how the salary system has allowed the Pirates and several other teams to rot, maybe some of the owners will wise up a figure out some sort of system for salary restraint. Major league baseball is on a fast track to destruction with the way things are now, because the sport begins to die when it ceases to be any sort of competition other than who has the biggest wallet.
It's very easy for mild mannered people who've never been in the heat of the action to call Zinedine Zidane a disgrace for his headbutt in the World Cup final. Even though his play was god-like for many years, he is still human at the end of the day. A magnificent career will not be tarnished by one moment of losing control. And seeing as Marco Materazzi is one of the world dirtiest players, not to many people were sad to see him on the ground, even if he was embelishing the incident.
On the topic of diving and embelishment, this World Cup might have hit rock bottom. FIFA should and will have serious discussions as to how to change the direction the game is going. Perhaps a review by officials of questionable fouls after the game to check for fakers would help the problem, with hefty suspensions being handed out to the actors. I dont think it's outrageous to propose certain nations with reputations for diving be banned from competition until they clean up their act. All teams have at least one or two divers, but the theatrics display from some countries (Portugal and the world champions themselves to name a couple) disgrace the entire competition.
And personally, I thought this years edition of the World Cup was quite devoid of great moments or games that will go down as classics. France-Italy was not a bad final, but for most of the second half and extra time Italy sat back and allowed France to attack, but without allowing many great scoring opportunities. From my point of view France controlled most of the game, but was the loser in the end, an outcome that seemed unavoidable after their talisman Zidane was expelled. There were numerous other games as well where one team appeared to be the better, but still lost, sometimes in a shootout or after a questionable call from the official to make matters worse.
The Brazil squad that was supposed to be the team to beat played a grand total of 45 minutes of soccer. They spent the remaining time coasting around the field, though their raw talent still saw them through to the quarter-final after they defeated a much more deserving Ghana.
England managed to stumble their way into the quarter-final as well. They didn't play great, but were still the better team on the field in all of their games. So in typical English fasion they played heroically in a losing cause versus Portugal. Wayne Rooney was sent off controversially but the Brits remianed to better side even with ten men. But they couldn't score for 120 minutes so off to a shoot-out where again no Englishmen found the mark. Their only scorer was Owen Hargreaves...a Canadian. But was their really any doubt they would lose on penalties, their trademark method of exiting tournaments?
So it's onward to 2010 in South Africa. While it is a world cup, maybe it needs to be re-examined on how the continental berths are distributed. Is it reallt necessary to have competitive teams from Europe and South America (Uruguay, Ireland, Denmark to name a few) sitting at home because of the high level of comeptition for qualifying on those two continents, while the likes of Costa Rica, Togo, and Suadi Arabia are only present because somebody else had to qualify from North America, Africa, and Asia? Their are some quality teams in those regions, and they all qualify easily, so why not leave the pretenders at home? In the North American group, the USA and Mexico almost qualify by default due to the huge gap between them and anyone else, while two other teams with little hope of advancing any distance also find themselves in the World Cup. But over in Europe it is often a dogfight for even the best to make it to the last 32, while secondary countries that are still better than the 3rd/4th teams from N. America and Asia have little hope.
The Oilers trade of Chris Pronger for Joffrey Lupul, a good prospect Ladislav Smid, and high draft picks is disappointing in the sense that Edmonton lost on of the games biggest stars. But looking back, Eric Brewer was what Kevin Lowe gave up for Pronger, so Brewer for the afforementioned players and a trip to the Stanley Cup final doesn't look too shabby.
Eskimos coach Dany Maciocia made a couple of surprising cuts in training camp and early in the season in Joe Montford and Donny Brady. Montford is now back and after witnessing the struggles of the secondary Brady's return shouldn't be ruled out of the question. Not exactly looking like a genius, eh Maciocia?
Speaking of the all-star break, it was held in Pittsburgh. Steeltown was a great baseball city for over a century, but after 15 years of losing even the most loyal fans have their patience tested. Of course their struggles are due mainly to the fact that they are a farm team for the likes of New York and Boston. With much of the talk focusing on how the salary system has allowed the Pirates and several other teams to rot, maybe some of the owners will wise up a figure out some sort of system for salary restraint. Major league baseball is on a fast track to destruction with the way things are now, because the sport begins to die when it ceases to be any sort of competition other than who has the biggest wallet.
It's very easy for mild mannered people who've never been in the heat of the action to call Zinedine Zidane a disgrace for his headbutt in the World Cup final. Even though his play was god-like for many years, he is still human at the end of the day. A magnificent career will not be tarnished by one moment of losing control. And seeing as Marco Materazzi is one of the world dirtiest players, not to many people were sad to see him on the ground, even if he was embelishing the incident.
On the topic of diving and embelishment, this World Cup might have hit rock bottom. FIFA should and will have serious discussions as to how to change the direction the game is going. Perhaps a review by officials of questionable fouls after the game to check for fakers would help the problem, with hefty suspensions being handed out to the actors. I dont think it's outrageous to propose certain nations with reputations for diving be banned from competition until they clean up their act. All teams have at least one or two divers, but the theatrics display from some countries (Portugal and the world champions themselves to name a couple) disgrace the entire competition.
And personally, I thought this years edition of the World Cup was quite devoid of great moments or games that will go down as classics. France-Italy was not a bad final, but for most of the second half and extra time Italy sat back and allowed France to attack, but without allowing many great scoring opportunities. From my point of view France controlled most of the game, but was the loser in the end, an outcome that seemed unavoidable after their talisman Zidane was expelled. There were numerous other games as well where one team appeared to be the better, but still lost, sometimes in a shootout or after a questionable call from the official to make matters worse.
The Brazil squad that was supposed to be the team to beat played a grand total of 45 minutes of soccer. They spent the remaining time coasting around the field, though their raw talent still saw them through to the quarter-final after they defeated a much more deserving Ghana.
England managed to stumble their way into the quarter-final as well. They didn't play great, but were still the better team on the field in all of their games. So in typical English fasion they played heroically in a losing cause versus Portugal. Wayne Rooney was sent off controversially but the Brits remianed to better side even with ten men. But they couldn't score for 120 minutes so off to a shoot-out where again no Englishmen found the mark. Their only scorer was Owen Hargreaves...a Canadian. But was their really any doubt they would lose on penalties, their trademark method of exiting tournaments?
So it's onward to 2010 in South Africa. While it is a world cup, maybe it needs to be re-examined on how the continental berths are distributed. Is it reallt necessary to have competitive teams from Europe and South America (Uruguay, Ireland, Denmark to name a few) sitting at home because of the high level of comeptition for qualifying on those two continents, while the likes of Costa Rica, Togo, and Suadi Arabia are only present because somebody else had to qualify from North America, Africa, and Asia? Their are some quality teams in those regions, and they all qualify easily, so why not leave the pretenders at home? In the North American group, the USA and Mexico almost qualify by default due to the huge gap between them and anyone else, while two other teams with little hope of advancing any distance also find themselves in the World Cup. But over in Europe it is often a dogfight for even the best to make it to the last 32, while secondary countries that are still better than the 3rd/4th teams from N. America and Asia have little hope.
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